Starting at the End
by lyssanja
Summary: They could have been the epic of all times. Now they are just the tragedy of a one-time mistake.


They could have been the epic of all times. This Sakura thinks as she stares at his face, perfection personified. Now they are the tragedy of a one-time mistake.

She barely hears the shouts from across the field, the sounds of a fierce battle from somewhere distant (and yet so near, she knows, because she's in the middle of the battlefield, and she's surrounded by soldiers falling down, friends and foes alike).

She is way focused on his face, perfectly chiseled by Kami-sama himself (perhaps) to resemble those angels who sang in the heavenly courts.

_Only, he fell from his lofty post, into the earth, and deep into the abyss of misery._

He wears the mask of apathy better than Shikamaru, she thinks as she stares at those fathomless eyes that contained nothing, but held her soul in a tight grip. The dark circles in his eyes are nothing, the blood that splattered on his cheeks (now, whose blood could that have been, she wonders) are inconsequential. He is still perfect, though he looks like a weary, old man, all battle-worn and lost.

_This she knows because she is Sakura, and he is Sasuke-kun._

This time, she hears that shout from across the field, and she knows that it's Naruto who is shouting, because after all, he is Naruto, and Naruto always shouts, because he is another tragedy in his own right.

_Too bad that Naruto's tragedy would end in a ballad;_ _ she knows theirs would assuredly end in an elegy._

The sounds of battle come roaring in her ears, like a tidal wave coming unexpectedly. She hears the ring of metal against its kin, the screams of the wounded and dying (and for once she distinguishes the difference between the two, maybe because she has finally lost her obstinacy), the pants of soldiers struggling to fight for their leaders—and for their lives. She hears everything, and oddly enough, she can't find enough resolve in herself to care.

_And the only thing that seems to matter is that they are there, and she is standing in front of him, in what could have been an epic meeting._

And she knows theirs are a tragic ending.

She feels the warmth spreading in her chest, and her eyes blur (from the tears, she tells herself repeatedly). It all becomes glaringly clear, and she isn't resigned to the reality of it yet.

She begins to cough and gasp—because it becomes increasingly harder to breathe, standing in front of him, in the battle where she is a soldier, and he, an avenger. There's blood in his clothes, and she wonders distantly if the blood is his, if he is wounded, and if she could heal him.

_Not for once, she wants to prove himself to him, to brandish in front of him that she is not the same weak, annoying girl he looked down upon._

But she knows it is a lost cause, because she begins to cough, and knows that the blood is not his—never his—but hers. And that the warmth in her chest is not the feeling of elation she dreams of feeling when she meets him again, but blood seeping through her clothes from a chest wound.

_She feels oddly detached._

"Sakura," he enunciates, slowly, clearly, mechanically. She admires how he never lost that icy façade, and laments its ability to cut a slice across her chest (another addition to the thousand cuts he had inflicted on her over and over again).

She knows he's dying to ask her why, and wonders at the irony of the word. Because she is _dying_, and he really isn't.

_She dreams of being engulfed in his arms, but never of dying in his arms._

The flashbacks don't come, and she is vaguely disappointed, because writers have always written of it when the heroes and heroines are dying, and how the world seems to stop revolving, and scenes long buried in the deepest pits of the mind are unearthed. She supposes there's a qualification in this hero-heroine business, and she is found lacking, and that is why she does not have flashbacks. Instead, all there is is Sasuke-kun's scent, a bittersweet musk blended with lavender and the earth.

_She doesn't realize how she misses that scent until now, when her nostrils are assailed with it._

"Sakura," he repeats, and she marvels at his voice, so melodic like an angel's harp. In answer to his call, she coughs, and she tastes the metallic tang of her blood on her lips.

He doesn't hug her close, but that is understandable, because he is not a tactile person; he never cared much for being in close contact with anybody. He doesn't shed tears, and that too is understandable, because he is an avenger, and an avenger does not possess emotions.

She bursts into a fit of hysterical laughter, because there was no other way to end it. There was nothing for her to say, because they have run out of lines long before this, long before they could get to the middle of their could-have-been-an-epic.

_She surmises, if they made the mistake of starting at the end, then why couldn't they end at the beginning?_

She theorizes it's not because nobody ends up meeting a stranger he's known before (because she knows that kind of thing happens—writers have made a vast exposition of it). Maybe it's because somewhere along the line, the events veered of to the left instead of keeping to the right path, and thus they became a tangent line instead of an infinite circle. Or maybe because theirs is really a tragedy never meant to be a love story.

And she swallows the bitterness (along with the metallic taste of her own blood), because it's still hard, though a part of her has continually told her over the years, to end up in the exact opposite of a wish. Despite the constant disappointment, there comes a new wave of dismay, and a hint of rancor, and a little bit of wondering what the mistake is, and why it never happened the way she wanted it to happen.

_She does not know what to say, because there's nothing more to say._

She closes her eyes, and she feels infinitely tired, like a weary, old woman, all battle-worn and lost. She hears him say her name once more, and she breaks out into a smile, a dull lifeless smile that's all that she could muster. In a soft, fading voice, she whispers what he once whispered to her, at the middle of their story. _"Thank you."_


End file.
